July 28, 2009

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

While our thoughts are on the Pope and our prayers are going out to heaven...Do you wonder if anyone gets to sign his cast? - Ellyn of "Oblique House"

[Scott Hahn's] Covenant by Kinship: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Promises. Well, it was on sale at Amazon. What can I say?...Okay, down to brass tacks. This book starts by summing up covenant theology’s state of the art, by telling you all about all the important positions and articles to read. The archeological/sociological info about other Middle Eastern covenants, and how the important biblical covenants are similar and different, is particularly interesting. The book then follows up on this by making its own contentions about Biblical covenants and arguing for them. You may have already heard about many of these in Hahn presentations for popular audiences, but here they are backed up by all this previous work and research by others. There seems to be some new material also, and this I found very moving and illuminative. So yes, there is tons of useful stuff here, which also seems to provide a clear way out of a lot of knotty theological problems and “how did Christ save us?” stuff. - Suburban Banshee at "Aliens in this World"

Remember when something that goes without saying actually went without saying? - Tom of Disputations

Why do you turn your face away? We think that God has turned his face away from us when we find ourselves suffering, so that shadows overwhelm our feelings and stop our eyes from seeing the brilliance of the truth. All the same, if God touches our intellect and chooses to become present to our minds then we will be certain that nothing can lead us into darkness. A man’s face shines out more than the rest of his body and it is by the face that we perceive strangers and recognise our friends. How much more, then, is the face of God able to bring illumination to whoever he looks at! The apostle Paul has something important to say about this, as about so many other things. He is a true interpreter of Christ for us, bringing him to our understanding through well-chosen words and images. He says: It is the same God that said, ‘Let there be light shining out of darkness’, who has shone in our minds to radiate the light of the knowledge of God’s glory, the glory on the face of Christ. We have heard where Christ shines in us: he is the eternal brilliant illumination of souls, whom the Father sent into the world so that his face should shine on us and permit us to contemplate eternal and heavenly truths – we who had been plunged in earthly darkness. What shall I say about Christ, when even the apostle Peter said to the man who had been lame from birth Look upon us? The cripple looked at Peter and found light by the grace of faith: unless he had faithfully believed he could not have received healing. When there was so much glory to be seen among the Apostles, Zachaeus, hearing that the Lord Jesus was passing by, climbed a tree because he was small and weak and could not see the Lord through the crowd. He saw Christ and he found light. He saw Christ and instead of robbing others of their goods he began to give away his own. Why do you turn your face away? Let us read it thus: even if you do turn your face away from us, Lord, its light is still imprinted upon us. We hold it in our hearts and our innermost feelings are transformed by its light. For if you truly turn your face away, Lord, no-one can survive. - St. Ambrose via Amy Welborn

All I want to do is make reparation to God for what happened, to pray for the soul of the dead youth, to intercede for the other youth who did not mean to kill him. This totally random tragedy throws the misery of the world into sudden stark relief. It seems that all we can do now is pray for each other and hope that it "works." At times like this, I wonder at people who seem to think we can live without prayer. I think that there is only so much that one can bear alone. Prayer acts like a natural conductor--a network of copper wires connecting souls who would otherwise be left to their own pain. When there is nothing we can do to help others, or to help ourselves, we can still pray. - Sancta Sanctis

Much of the world’s supply of oil is under “Arab” lands. It was there for ages. Few knew it was there or what to do with it. Arab governments with western theories of profit and property became rich by selling it. But the market was invented by someone else. Suppose the Arab rulers were modern men who wanted to preserve the earth. They would have then said to the potential purchasers, “No thanks, we are saving the oil for future generations.” No one knows what future generations will need or want or know how to do. The Lord probably created a world in which just enough resources are present for His intentions. With the help of the human brain, the only real resource, human beings might reach the end for which God created them. The end God intended is not in this world. The earth-warmers are really heretical theologizers who somehow think the purpose of the species man is to spin round and round on this planet forever, with the aid of much government control. - James Schall on "Catholic Thing"

Amazon deleted books that were already available in print, but in our paperless future—when all books exist as files on servers—courts would have the power to make works vanish completely. Unthinkable? Perhaps. But now we've been shown that it is technically possible. Manjoo's suggestion? 'Don't buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it.' I'm not quite ready to go that far, but I do think we need to keep the pressure on Amazon... It was a reminder that when we abandon physical media for digital we give up a lot of rights. And it was a reminder that the media giants who sell us that digital content wield an ever-increasing amount of power. - Kindleville blog

An honest reading of the encyclical is hard for Right and Left alike. I’m not comfortable with increasing foreign aid, redistributing wealth, or anything having to do with the United Nations. But if you went to National Review Online after the encyclical’s release, you would have seen writers wrestling with the issues, reading and trying to understand the thinking behind this serious moral guide. And while we dealt with the text, the more mainstream headlines latched onto what’s “bad” for conservatives in it and suppressed what is challenging for the Left. Newspapers everywhere ignored the pope’s condemnation of the far-too-many international organizations that contribute to a culture of death, as only one example. - Kathryn Lopez of NRO

You pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him. - St. Teresa of Avila via Exultet

It has occurred to me that "single mother" is probably the greatest oxymoron of our age. No mother EVER does it on her own. For one thing, she needs a man to get the process started at all--even if she just wants him as a sperm donor. For another thing, she needs a form of financial support: most often it's her disenfranchised ex-husband; sometimes it's her parents (which means her own father); quite frequently these days it's the government (which means taxpayers, a great number of whom are male). On the other hand, if she works hard enough to be self-supporting, then she'll need another kind of support: in which case, the child will be raised by a relative, a nanny or a revolving door of daycare workers.- - Sancta Sanctis

Why this URL?

Why "poncer.blogspot.com"?

PONC is the business acronym for "Price Of Non-Conformance", which basically means putting a price-tag on a screw-up. This from a faddish business book from long ago. We were impressed someone could make money writing lines like "quality is free".

Site

Betty Duffy

Various Links

Quick Quotes

"Christianity brought reverence for what is below us." - Goethe____

"Your salvation is in the hands of God...There is no purely human knowledge of one's eternal destiny that can contain the infinitely greater certainty contained in your faith and hope through Christ our Lord." - EWTN Q&A____

"It is a truism in the interpretation of Scripture that its spiritual message is disclosed only to those who bring to their reading a consciousness of their need for God and his mercy. Only they ‘get’ it and appreciate the urgency of the message. The others are all bewildered.” - Msgr. Herron